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The Hypocrisy of the Gaza Human Rights Campaign

You will find few contemporary historic analyses that identify the spread of Islam through Arabia to be anything other than one of violent conquest. Beyond just the initial expansion of Islam through the Arabian Peninsula, the totality of the Muslim Conquests spanned a period of ~430 years (with further expansion and conquest later), ultimately claiming more square-mileage of land than any other empire up to that point.

When looking at the history of Islamic expansion it stands as a virtual impossibility to bypass the conquering of the innumerable people and cultures that preceded its existence. From Syria to Persia and Palestine to Iraq; To Europe (Spain) in the West and India in the East; and through Constantinople, Asia, and North Africa; Islam ciphered the knowledge and wealth from preexisting cultures and people, laying claim to all that stood before it by way of the sword, inevitably leaving all but dust in its wake once the established cultures had vanished.

Muhammad’s life, and the subsequent 1,382 years of Islamic existence thereafter have been marred – if not defined – by the command, conquer and death that is intertwined therein. And so it is not without bizarre irony that Palestinians and Arab Muslims alike have managed to reduce the dialogue surrounding the convoluted Gaza conflict to one that is wholly, and solely focused on human rights.

The Syrian Civil War, a conflict in the region that has been largely reduced to infighting between Islamic groups, has a total death toll of over 170,000 people and displaced another 1,000,000+. Of the ~170,000 dead, over 55,000 have been civilians. In fact, the rate of death in the conflict is ever-rising, and is becoming virtually impossible to accurately measure. This is a human rights travesty in which the number of deaths in one week often surpass the entire death toll for the month-long Israel/Gaza conflict.

Involved in the conflict is ISIL, otherwise known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which postures to reestablish the Islamic unity of many of the lands involved in the Muslim Conquests described at the onset of this post. As of this morning, ISIL have made inroads to Lebanese territory and are rapidly expanding. ISIL along with many other Jihadist groups are routinely involved in the murder and oppression of minority religious groups abroad. In fact, religious minority groups all across predominantly Islamic lands are routinely subjugated at the hands of the ruling Islamic class. Coptic Christians in Egypt, for example, have bore the brunt of ethnic and religious supremacism while native Iraqi Christians are facing ethnic cleansing at the hands of ISIL.

Despite the obvious realities involved (that is to say, that Islam remains a larger proponent of death, oppression, and barbarism than Israel could ever dream to be) the microscopic focus for human rights remains on a conflict that, by and large, pales in comparison to many of the atrocities taking place around the globe.

And so it begs the question: What is the real driving factor behind the focus on Israel and Palestine? Put simply, the answer can be found in the question: Israel. If Israel were not a Jewish State, the conflict would garner nowhere near the microscopic focus that it does, and would most certainly not receive the unanimous condemnation of Muslims around the globe. It would stand as just another conflict in an embattled region of the world that has, for the better part of 1,000 years, been in a perpetual state of war. Moreover, the conflict in and of itself would more than likely not exist, as the conflict hinges entirely upon the premise that Israel is not an Islamic nation by either demography or state rule.

While the death of innocent civilians is deplorable under any circumstance it is no less one of the many unfortunate realities of war. A reality of war that is perhaps more complex in the Gaza conflict than in any other, and a reality of war that – often conveniently forgotten – Arab Muslims are all too familiar with.

This is not an issue of human rights, and it never was. This is Arab Muslim supremacism and Antisemitism masquerading behind the guise of human rights; an effort to exploit Western sensitivity in exchange for supporting the eradication of a Jewish state, and to ultimately see the return of the Islamic status quo in a land long-tainted by an inhumane history.